borrowed words, Part Seven (& last)

Here's the last installment of my quote collection, circa post-high-school and beyond.  

I remember reading Alexander Pope to while away empty hours at my desk in Japan, "teaching" English.  (Cheers, fellow JETs!). Kahlil Gibran, though, came before Pope, I thought - I read him ensconced in the philosophy nook of the commune library, that summer in Georgia.  

I still enjoy the poem my collection ends on.  Reminds me of another quote, from Solon of ancient Greece:  "Each man of you, individually, walketh with the tread of a fox, but collectively ye are geese."

One science only will one genius fit,

So vast is Art, so narrow human wit.

~Alexander Pope

A little learning is a dangerous thing. ~Alexander Pope

Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace

The naked nature and the living grace,

With gold and jewels cover every part

And hide with ornaments their want of art.

~Alexander Pope

All looks infected that the infected spy,

As all looks jaundiced to the jaundiced eye.

~Alexander Pope

And she who scorns a man must die a maid. ~Alexander Pope

Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;

Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.

~Alexander Pope

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

~Alexander Pope

Is not the dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable? ~Kahlil Gibran

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. ~Kahlil Gibran

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. ~Kahlil Gibran

…even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. ~Kahlil Gibran

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; and when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. … For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. ~Kahlil Gibran

“The Wishes of an Elderly Man at a Garden Party, June 1914”

I wish I loved the human race;

I wish I loved its silly face;

I wish I liked the way it walks;

I wish I like the way it talks.

And when I'm introduced to one,

I wish I thought “what jolly fun.”

~Walter-Raleigh

So, after typing all this … I find I still cannot throw the old notebook away. I still like quotes, and there are pages left, empty .....

[If you missed Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six, click and be happy!]

borrowed words, Part Six

So much wisdom (or wit!) packed into such a tight space in these quotes.  Which are your favorites?  Which do you disagree with?

Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed warm, mental fog. ~Joseph Conrad

Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. ~Joseph Conrad

It is the lovers of solitude that have explored the ends of the earth, founded empires, bred races of free and conquering people, extinguished savagery, advanced the growth of science, philosophy, and all learning, and reformed and rejuvenated religion. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Once you accept a thing as true, without knowing whether it is is true or not, you are on the road to mental ruin. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Life is short, but wide. ~Spanish proverb

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. ~Tallulah Bankhead

Immortality consists largely of boredom. ~Cochrane (Star Trek)

Alas! art is long, and life is short! ~Benjamin Franklin, The Ephemera

It is error alone which needs the support of the government. Truth can stand alone. ~Thomas Jefferson

But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. ~Thomas Jefferson

Man is the only creature with the capacity for reason, and the predilection to avoid it. ~ J. E. Holbert (?)

People are like alcohol – better in small quantities. ~ unknown

Better a good enemy than a bad friend.  ~ Plato

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. ~Edmund Birk

These do I love:

Old things, old places,

Remembered times,

Familiar faces.

~unknown

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give me health, and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am human. Therefore anything that is human is not alien to me. ~ Terence (Roman playwright) 

Wit is thought and words elegantly adapted to the subject. ~John Dryden

[of Chaucer] As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off. ~John Dryden

borrowed words, Part Five

Love these various thoughts on the creative process, reflection, and our interwoven-ness with each other.  That last reminds me of Deitrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, which I need to re-read.  

I remember being impressed by his assertion that when the Bible refers to the Church as a body, united, it is not making reference to a goal, or an ideal, but to a present reality.  We affect one another, like it or not.  When you are injured, I bleed, for we are one, deny it though we may.  Our fight for independence from each other reminds me of the truism about unforgiveness:  it is like drinking poison and waiting for the other guy to die.  

I need you.  You need me.  There is no way around it.

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence.  ~Slyman Bryson

The days are just packed. ~Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

Please God, I will live my years with my face to the light, meeting the blows of fate with a joke, the contempt of men with a smile, the plague and mystery of the Unknown in my own heart and in the universe with cheerful faith, and death the best I can when I come to it.   ~Dr. Frank Crane

No artist has any other aim than to show his soul by his work.   ~Dr. Frank Crane

For the use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices and follies, and also our fears. ~Joseph Conrad, Victory, 1914

The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost. It is not the clearsighted who lead the world. ~Joseph Conrad, Victory, 1914

I feel a most keen sense of self-laudation in that I am doing something the world is willing to pay for. ~Dr. Frank Crane

I wonder if it is written just which souls, of all the millions, shall touch ours? And each one whose personality impinges upon ours, even in the least, leaves some particles of flavor of himself upon us, and we upon him. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The Lord certainly shows His low opinion of money by the kind of folks He gives it to.   ~Dr. Frank Crane

Pessimism is the fine name for cowardice, vulgarity, self-pity, and failure. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The author lays his compelling mind upon the lives of thousands when he has written by the light of his own soul-burning. ~Dr. Frank Crane

It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; griefs, where they wound in solitude, wound more deeply. ~Seneca

borrowed words, Part Four

A few more ... lately I am especially appreciating the truth of the Seneca quote about process over product, and the one by Saint-Exupery about the web of our relationships; one thinks of the rose cared for by the little prince.  So many truths, so deep is life.

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances,

And each man in his life plays many parts.

     ~William Shakespeare

I flee who chases me, and chase who flees me. ~Ovid, The Loves, A.D. 8

The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture. ~Seneca, 1^st century

We are what we love. ~Erik Erikson

Glimpsed heaven and hell are vastly more potent than they would be if they were somewhere in New Jersey. ~Dr. Frank Crane

We do not emphasize enough the sheer delight of merely being alive. ~Dr. Frank Crane

I like my pen and my pad of paper, and to see words grow under my hand. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. ~Saint-Exupery

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. ~Voltaire

borrowed words, Part Three

Words are such a gift.  I am currently watching my small son learn the potential of words.  "Chocolate", I say, and his face lights up.  "No-no", and his brow furrows in disapproval of his own.  He hears "Daddy" and turns to listen for the opening of the door.  We don't even say "outside" unless we mean to take him there.  Words make things happen, he is finding, and bring order and meaning to his world.  I can't wait for his first joke.

It is with a consciousness of the gift that words are, that I appreciate especially the first two quotes here, and, down further, the one from Aristotle.  The ability to say what you mean is at the same time one of the most practical of all skills, and one which brings to life the most peace and beauty.

Loud talking is a sign of a consciousness that one's reasoning is feeble. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Profanity comes from a limited vocabulary. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The strongest being conceivable is God. And He is so modest, quiet, and hidden that many people refuse to believe there is a God. He never blusters. Hence, many humbugs cannot understand how He exists. ~Dr. Frank Crane

I come into the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are treasures of countless images of things in every manner. ~St. Augustine

Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity. ~Aristotle

When I say “I”, I mean a thing absolutely unique, not to be confused with any other. ~Ugo Betti

Every step forward that we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind. ~John Lancaster Spalding

It is only when mind and body quit and rest that the soul comes out for an airing. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Sweeter shall the roses blow

In those far years, those happier years;

And children weep when we lie low

Far fewer tears, far softer tears.

         ~Dr. Frank Crane

borrowed words, Part Two

Part Two of my quotes collection:

I just love how some of these quotes contradict others (check out especially the first and last quotes here).  Isn't that just like life?  Two sides of the same coin.  So often two truths can occupy the same space.  Life is simultaneously more complicated and simpler than we readily imagine.  Enjoy these tidbits of wisdom from yesteryear....:

Our life is what our thoughts make it. ~Marcus Aurelius, 2^nd century B.C.

Nowhere is the deep wisdom and justice of the Creator more apparent than in His so arranging the universe that a man can do his own sinning. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The little ones leaped

and shouted and laugh'd,

and all the hills echoed.

~William Blake

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

My country is the world;

My countrymen are mankind.

~William Lloyd Garrison, 1803

Kindness is the most exasperating vengeance. ~Dr. Frank Crane

There wouldn't be much work done in this world, mister, if only horses and folks that are plum fit had to do it. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Incompetence is no excuse for despair. ~Dr. Frank Crane

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars – on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

~Robert Frost

The quality of life is determined by its activities. ~Aristotle, 4^th century B.C.

borrowed words, Part One

I have a small, grimy blue notebook about a third full of quotes I collected over a period of a few years.  None of them are dated, but judging from the changes in the handwriting, I'd say it looks like I started in in high school (roundish printing, short capitals, the typewriter "a"), went through college (smaller, less round mix of cursive and printing with the occasional experiment interjecting capitals where they do not belong), possibly into post-college Japan years (judging from the Alexander Pope and Kahlil Gibran quotes).

These quotes probably won't interest anyone but me - they're my history, after all.  I'm not really posting them here for you (although they may have some entertainment value, who knows?).  I don't want to keep the inconvenient little binder they're in, but I can't quite bear to lose all the quotes, either, despite the fact that it's been years since I looked at them.  It would feel a bit like throwing away my baby book.

So, what better place to preserve my collection of quotes than .... my blog!!!

Since it's too much for even me to handle in one sitting, I'll break it into parts.  I present to you, Part One, ordered as they were recorded:

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.  ~ Sir Thomas Browne

What web is this,
Of what will be, is, 
       and was?
                              ~ Jorge Luis Borges

There was a star danced, and under that I was born.  ~ William Shakespeare

A baby is the most complicated object made by unskilled labor.  ~ anonymous

The youth of art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.  ~ Samuel Butler

As for me, let my bones and flesh be burned, and the ashes dropped in the moving waters, and if my name shall live at all, let it be found among Books, the only garden of forget-me-nots, the only human device for perpetuating this personality.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

Glory be to stubbornness!  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

Come, be agreeable, for you will have little competition, and are pretty sure to succeed.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each of you, individually, walkest with the tread of a fox, but collectively ye are geese.  ~ Solon

I think, therefore I am.  ~ Rene Descartes

Man is by nature a social animal.  ~ Aristotle

Truth is arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue.  ~ Arthur Conon Doyle

Physical activity has a peculiar luminous effect upon the judgement.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

All the religion that is of any account is what we thresh out with our own hands, suffer out with our own hearts, and find out with our own visions.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane